The World We Created at Hamilton High.

• Author: Noah, Timothy

The World We Created at Hamilton High.

The education reform movement is settling into flabby middle age. Five years ago, enlightened education leaders like Albert Shanker were talking about career ladders and teacher competency tests; today Shanker talks vaguely about giving teachers more freedom to experiment with computers and audio tapes. Legislative victories in state capitals have given way to murky theorizing about how to improve education at the school level.

This shift seems premature: legislative solutions have not been exhausted. For example, although most states have mandated competency tests for prospective teachers, only a handful have taken the additional step of testing teachers already inside the classroom. Still, reformers are right that the fate of our schools will ultimately be determined at ground level. And if education reform depends on the performance of individual schools, citizens and policymakers would be wise to start learning what makes them tick. Gerald Grant's book is a good place to start.

Grant, a sociologist at Syracuse University, conducted research on one Syracuse high school over an eight-year period, eventually settling in fulltime to teach urban anthropology (and recruit students to conduct research for his book). But Grant wasn't satisfied to know the school as well as its teachers and students did. He also dug into the school's history.

When Nottingham High, the real name of Grant's "Hamilton High," opened in 1953, it served mostly upper-middle class whites. Academically, Nottingham was a success. Students performed at least two hours of homework a night, and nearly everyone went on to college. But the price was racial segregation. Nottingham desegregated in 1965 in order to qualify for newly available federal funds. The result was racial tension that boiled over into violence. During one cafeteria riot, even the principal suffered a fractured skull. As Nottingham became a war zone, wealthy students fled to the suburbs and academic performance went into a tailspin. Between 1967 and 1974, the mean SAT score fell 60 points.

Grant clearly believes that, no matter how painful, integration was necessary and worthwhile. But he bemoans two power shifts. One was the increased leverage of outsiders over Nottingham. For example, two Supreme Court cases and a subsequent ACLU statement led the school board to subject discipline procedures to "grievance and courtroom-like review." Grant argues that fear of legal...